


Time x Time

by Unovis



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-14
Updated: 2013-05-14
Packaged: 2017-12-11 21:44:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/803579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unovis/pseuds/Unovis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time and time again.<br/>A remix of "Triptych" by alltoseek.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time x Time

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Triptych](https://archiveofourown.org/works/194985) by [alltoseek](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alltoseek/pseuds/alltoseek). 



> Takes from the original the idea of quotations from T. S. Eliot’s poem “Burnt Norton” (first of his _Four Quartets_ ), the theme of time, and statements by key participants in one of the episodes. This one is pretty obvious. The quotes are in italics in the beginning of each section, and in order from each of the poem’s five parts.  
> My thanks again to Jay Tryfanstone for her support and input, and enthusiasm for Eliot.

I  
 _Time present and time past/Are both perhaps present in time future/And time future contained in time past._  
My name is Henry Knight. I have only one future.  
Time, yes, we’ve talked about time. How wrong it is for the present to be the past, always, never passing. How winter cycles into spring. But in myself, inside in the autumn hollow (so close, beyond the garden wall) nothing greens. It was and it is and it will be just the one time, chasing me, always chasing me, footfalls and howls, until its jaws close on my throat.

 

II  
 _The thrilling wire in the blood/Sings below inveterate scars/Appeasing long forgotten wars._  
I’m happy, come home. Didn’t like the crippling bit or the boredom, but that’s past. It’s good to be back, to the green summers and trees, the parks and color, really, in London there are trees. There are friends, old and new. There’s action. There’s doing and making a difference. There’s London, that I never thought I’d get again. I know Mycroft said “the battleground,” but it’s not. Not for me, and that’s not what Sherlock’s shown me. He looked up between walls and saw stars, remember. Spotted the celestial marker in dots of paint. Saw the city in grains of mud. He sees patterns, not battle plans.

It’s unbalanced and unfair that he can read the past so clearly in others, and yet there’s nothing of his own he shares. I’d say he thinks it’s obvious, that if we weren’t so stupid, we could see his history in the way he stirs his tea, but I think there’s more to it. He’s erased his past, I get the feeling. I’ve looked. I’ve asked. Well, not Mycroft, but Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade; that homeless girl, once, on a cold day. Like a boy without a shadow, standing in the noon sun. And never, not once, has he said what he thinks his future holds. So how the hell was I to know what put the wind up him? Is fear of a giant, murderous hound irrational? Did he frighten me to retaliate? I know, I know how casually he uses me; he’s a wounding bastard. It’s a price I pay, to stay, to fight the living fight. 

 

III  
 _Here is a place of disaffection/Time before and time after/In a dim light_  
Foolish Henry, ridden by his past. Damned John, loving John, bound and blinded by his heart. There is no point but the here and now from which to observe with clarity. There is no point but the here and now from which to see the ravages of pasts, the threats of futures, that drive the acts of common men. There is the lab, the palace, the nexus of thought. This place of perfect balance (this center of the web, oh yes, I recognize) this cold equinox: this, this, was threatened by visions and violent fear, and that my dear, dim, _friend_ could not understand.

 

IV  
 _Time and the bell have buried the day,/the black cloud carries the sun away. ... After the kingfisher's wing/Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still/At the still point of the turning world._  
Did the fairies steal Bluebell, to live with them under the hill? 

 

V  
 _The Word in the desert/Is most attacked by voices of temptation,/The crying shadow in the funeral dance,/The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera._  
He had to be stopped. His mad theories were right, after all. He and his son, regrettably, had to be thoroughly discredited. Well, dead and discredited, dead good enough, but killed dead by a monster! Immortal monster, timeless monster, hereditary monster, father and then son. I had reason, you know. They were fools to stop work on the HOUND project. To stop, citing human frailty? It’s the work that matters, it’s the work that will survive, beyond the lives of men. We have within our grasp an essence: Fear eternal, fear universal, created in and by the subject. A weapon that the enemy would use against itself, tailor to defeat itself! It was too valuable to lose.


End file.
